<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>five times they almost said i love you and one time they didn't have to by ladyofrebellion</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28909122">five times they almost said i love you and one time they didn't have to</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofrebellion/pseuds/ladyofrebellion'>ladyofrebellion</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Villains Series - V. E. Schwab</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Dorks in Love, Love/Hate, M/M, Stupidity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:16:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,472</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28909122</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofrebellion/pseuds/ladyofrebellion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why?” Eli asked.</p>
<p>I loved you once , Victor didn't say. I love you still.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-Title is self explanatory. They're hopeless, irritating gays.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eli Cardale | Eli Ever/Victor Vale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>56</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>five times they almost said i love you and one time they didn't have to</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <ol>
<li><b> Lockland</b></li>
</ol>
<p>False face must hide what the false heart doth know.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eli looked at Victor like people looked at forest fires. First horror, then awe. </p>
<p>He looked at Victor examining other people, he looked at his delicate jaw and fair hair falling into his eyes. He looked at his slender neck, exposed and pale. He looked at Victor’s mouth, lips rosy and glinting teeth. Eli felt heat on his cheeks.</p>
<p>Eli had just died, put himself on a tub full of ice and hoped Victor was skilled enough to bring him back. And here they were, in a bar trying (and failing) to get wasted, still high on the sheer stupidity of what they’d done. Thinking up new names for Eli and talking of forever.</p>
<p>He could feel Victor’s hands on him, here and there, like he wanted to make sure Eli was alive. Victor looked around the bar while he grazed Eli’s wrist with the tips of his fingers. Eli shivered. They were drunk. They had to be. He could feel the goosebumps all the way up to his shoulder when Victor’s thumb pressed against Eli’s pulse the slightest bit.</p>
<p>Eli’s throat was parched.</p>
<p>“Something the matter, Ever?” Victor asked, blue eyes glossy and smirk softening.</p>
<p>His fingertip kept drawing patterns on Eli’s wrist. He felt a lump in his throat. A flash of a thought, enough for him to make out its meaning, threatening to make its way out of his mouth without permission.</p>
<p>
  <em> I love you. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<ol>
<li><b> Merit</b></li>
</ol>
<p>And this same progeny of evils comes</p>
<p>From our debate, from our dissension.</p>
<p>We are their parents and original.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The gala was chaos and noise and crackling energy under Victor’s skin. He heard the screams and gunshots, the barked orders and champagne flutes breaking.</p>
<p>Eli was here. They were both here. And Marcella was facing him. He saw Eli try to get to her, but there was that unfortunate shield around her. Well. Victor could assist with that. He saw Marcella reach for Eli’s face, destroying it.</p>
<p>For a second, Victor’s breath caught in his chest, looking at Eli’s beautiful face rot away and fall in a cloud of ash. For a second, he felt fear. Of losing him, of not being the one making him disappear. Of not knowing which option scared him the most. Eli was so rooted in his life that Victor wasn’t sure what would be of him without him.</p>
<p>He had spent so much time chasing him in search for revenge that he never stopped to think if he really wanted him gone. Victor didn’t like the uncertainty that came with the thought, the void threatening to swallow him when he pictured a future with Eli gone.</p>
<p>But then Eli’s face started knitting itself back together, and rotting away, and regenerating once more. Victor watched Marcella’s smile slip, he saw uncertainty creep into her eyes as Eli said something to her.</p>
<p><em> There he is </em>, Victor thought.</p>
<p>He was surprised when a pleased laugh escaped him, mirth and pride bubbling in his chest. He didn’t let himself examine those feelings, didn’t let himself question the desperate warmth spreading inside his chest as he attacked Marcella’s EO and saw Eli’s hand close around her throat like a vice.</p>
<p>He didn’t question the face-splitting smile he wore when he glimpsed at Eli’s face and saw how he was enjoying himself. Victor was drunk on his power and the foreign feelings, and Eli’s warning scream was the last thing he heard before an arm wrapped around his throat.</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<ol>
<li><b> EON</b></li>
</ol>
<p>I have no way, and therefore want no eyes.</p>
<p>I stumbled when I saw.</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>Eli suspected some irregular activity when they transferred him to another cell. This one was part of a twin set of glass cages separated by a glass wall. He felt like a piece of art displayed in a museum. Or an exotic animal trapped in a zoo. He tried to look around and see how many cameras were pointing at him. None he could see, but he knew better than to expect privacy.</p>
<p>Resurrecting was no victory for Eli. Waking up in the labs was its own particular hell. Healing was harder these days, as if his body were constantly wrestling with the serum. A sick joke with him as the punchline. Scalpels and forceps and the smell of latex gloves haunted him everywhere. He missed Stell each passing day, with every carving of organs and slow healing of flesh.</p>
<p>Eli was reminded of hellish paintings with all that gore and sex and twisted limbs, the damned’s faces frozen in horror. He was trapped in his personal kind of Hell. He could still feel the new doctor scavenging inside him, poking at his organs and asking Eli about his healing like he wasn’t painfully awake while being cracked open like an egg. </p>
<p>Sometimes the pain was so strong he’d see white and fall unconscious for some precious seconds. And then he’d wake up still in the lab. White tiles and cameras in every corner. He’d often wished he could die, disappear into the earth. He wanted to vanish into smoke so no one could ever grasp him. Contain him. He wanted so many things. He let out a huff of a laugh.</p>
<p>Hours bled into days until Eli lost count of them. It could have been months when he heard synchronized steps and hushed voices just outside the dark room where Eli’s twin glass cells were displayed. He feigned being asleep, it was never smart to let EON soldiers know you were watching them. His heart quickened when they approached the cells, but it wasn’t Eli’s time for the lab. It usually was first thing in the morning, when his body had processed dinner.</p>
<p>He heard a door being open, and then a heavy <em> thump </em>. He waited until the guards walked out to raise his head and open his eyes. He squinted in the dim emergency lights, trying to make out the shape stretched on the cot in front of him. </p>
<p>Who would they have brought in to be his—</p>
<p>Eli froze. Gaunt form, white hair, sharp features that looked haunting in his sleep.</p>
<p><em> Of course </em>, he thought.</p>
<p>Eli observed Victor for hours, looking at his unguarded face. He fantasized about breaking into the cell and smothering him in his sleep. He fantasized about breaking into the cells and… and.</p>
<p>When the lights were switched on, Victor opened his eyes. He seemed too aware to have been asleep just a second before.His icy blue eyes were piercing Eli.</p>
<p>Both of them got up in a swift movement, like two wolves about to bite down on their opponent's neck. There was a kind of energy between them, a gravitational pull. They walked up to the glass wall, never tearing their eyes away. And then he felt it, the searing all-consuming pain, luke every cell in his body was exploding at the same time.</p>
<p>He saw Victor's icy glare as he dropped to the floor, he heard the voices barking orders through the speakers. And then, just before the pain stopped, he saw Victor's body seize and drop to the floor.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They woke up almost at the same time, both face-first on the ground. They squinted their eyes and grunted, getting up.</p>
<p>"Mr. Vale," the voice through the speakers said. "Abstain from harming Mr. Ever or we'll have to electrocute you again."</p>
<p><em> Ah </em>, Eli thought, letting out a humourless laugh.</p>
<p>"No promises," said Victor through gritted teeth.</p>
<p>This was going to be a worse nightmare than Eli thought.</p>
<p>They spent the days staring and ignoring each other in equal parts. There was an unspoken agreement between them that they wouldn't talk.</p>
<p>They knew they were being monitored. They knew they were being taunted and coaxed into a sick experiment. But neither of them was desperate enough to have lost their pride.</p>
<p>For weeks, nothing happened. Sometimes Eli saw Victor with his eyes unfocused, sometimes he watched him pace the cell like a caged animal. Other times, he watch him stay in his cot for days at a time, not even eating.</p>
<p>And then it happened. Victor grew restless, Eli watched him in his sleep tossing and turning. He pretended to be asleep when Victor woke up screaming from nightmares.</p>
<p>He saw how Victor's hands started to tremble, imperceptibly at first. He saw his eyes darting to every corner. He, honest to God, watched Victor Vale go through breathing exercises.</p>
<p>"What's wrong," Eli finally snapped.</p>
<p>Victor didn't seem to hear him, head in his hands.</p>
<p>"<em> Victor </em>."</p>
<p>Victor looked at Eli, startled. Eli frowned.</p>
<p>"What's wrong."</p>
<p>Victor huffed and bit out a word that Eli couldn't hear before getting under his covers and turning his back to him.</p>
<p>Eli could see him tremble.</p>
<p>Two days later, Victor looked barely cognizant. He started yanking at his hair, glaring at Eli when he asked if he had a headache. His breathing became erratic, and Eli was really starting to feel worried. If not for Victor's wellbeing then for the possibility of losing a cellmate.</p>
<p>"No, no, no, no, no."</p>
<p>Eli stood up. Those were the first words Victor had uttered since their unfortunate first encounter. He really looked awful.</p>
<p>"Vic," Eli said, urgent.</p>
<p>Victor looked up looking haunted.</p>
<p>"<em> Eli </em>."</p>
<p>He staggered to his feet and stumbled to the glass diving them. Eli approached instinctually, something long buried rearing its head inside him at the sight of Victor's evident suffering.</p>
<p>"Tell me what's wrong," Eli said.</p>
<p>"I can't fix it," Victor whispered, pressing his forehead to the glass.</p>
<p>"Fix what."</p>
<p>"I can't <em> make it stop </em>."</p>
<p>The word sounded so tortured and desperate that Eli brought his hand up in an attempt to comfort him.</p>
<p>Then, Victor let out a gasp. And then a moan before convulsing and falling to the floor.</p>
<p>Eli looked in horror as Victor's face contorted.</p>
<p>"No," Eli whispered.</p>
<p>Victor was trying to say something, eyes looking directly into his.</p>
<p>"No!" Eli said to the cameras. "He wasn't doing anything!"</p>
<p>Victor let out another pained sound. There was fury in his eyes, now.</p>
<p>"Back," he bit out.</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>"<em> Stay back. </em>"</p>
<p>It was the warning in his eyes what convinced Eli. He stepped away from Victor, watching him writhe on the floor. </p>
<p>Eli was about to say something when Victor screamed. A sound loud at broken that clawed at something inside Eli's chest. Victor kept screaming, the energy crackling and burning around him until his body seized once more and everything turned dark.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eli could hear the loud siren as the emergency light turned on. Their red light made Victor's limp form look more grotesque. Eli let out a breath and ran towards the wall.</p>
<p>Victor wasn't breathing.</p>
<p>Eli felt something undefined clawing at his throat. He swallowed a scream. He punched the wall. He wanted to tear something apart.</p>
<p>"<em> Victor </em>."</p>
<p>He kept repeating it like a mantra, like saying his name over and over again might bring him back. The ugly thing writhing under Eli's skin wanted to bash itself against the wall and crack it up and get to Victor's body. It wanted to bring Victor's head to his chest and scream until Eli's throat tasted of blood.</p>
<p>It tore at Eli's heart and snatched the words right out of it, waving them like a banner, repeating them like a sick joke.</p>
<p>
  <em> I love him. I loved him. </em>
</p>
<p>Eli gasped, ready to start clawing his way into the cell. Ready to break himself against that fucking wall if he had to.</p>
<p>And then Victor gasped, and opened his eyes.</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<ol>
<li><b> EON</b></li>
</ol>
<p>Come, let’s away to prison.</p>
<p>We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.</p>
<p>When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down</p>
<p>And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,</p>
<p>And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh</p>
<p>At gilded butterflies</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eli came from the lab looking ashy and being carried by two guards. Victor sat up in his cot, suddenly alert. He tried not to pace, not to show more of a reaction. He tried not to scream when they threw Eli in his cot without care, when Eli let out a pained moan.</p>
<p>The part of him he’d tried to bury beneath hatred and vengeance and a cold facade screaming for him to drop the guards dead. To torture them into releasing him and then cehcking on Eli’s wounds.</p>
<p>Eli’s suffering would’ve brought him joy once. It would’ve made him smile in vindication and laugh. Not anymore. Not when he knew every cut, every removed organ was in order to fix whatever Victor had broken inside himself.</p>
<p>Eli never said it, he never threw it in Victor’s face. And Victor soon found himself ashamed at his inability to keep himself from dying. At his inability to keep Eli from harm. He would’ve suffered through another confinement, another death, instead of this torture.</p>
<p>The guards walked out. Eli didn’t move.</p>
<p>Victor walked towards the glass wall, sitting down with his shoulder against it, watching Eli’s chest slowly rise and fall. He knew he wasn’t asleep, he could see it in the tension of his muscles and his tightly shut eyes.</p>
<p>But more importantly, he could feel the pain. Victor could feel pain like a shark could smell blood. It emanated from Eli’s form, never easing. Victor understood, then. Whatever they did to him, Eli’s ability wasn’t half as effective as before.</p>
<p>Victor closed his eyes and reached for the dial, lowering it slowly, letting Eli know what was happening. He dulled the pain into a nuisance, something at the back of the head that could be dismissed. He shut his eyes more tightly when he heard Eli’s relieved sigh.</p>
<p>When he opened his eyes, Eli was staring back. He was still laying down, unable to stand no matter the absence of pain. There was something hard in the way he looked at Victor, something sharp.</p>
<p>“Why?” Eli asked.</p>
<p><em> I loved you once </em> , Victor didn't say. <em> I love you </em>still.</p>
<p>Instead, he said:</p>
<p>“Remember your energy bars?”</p>
<p>Eli frowned, thrown off at the sudden change of topic.</p>
<p>“In our apartment. You stached those and they kept disappearing. You forgot you ate them.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Eli said, slowly. “The doctor said it was due to stress, short-term memory loss.”</p>
<p>Victor bit the insides of his lips, fighting back a smile. But Eli saw it. How could he not? They had lived together for years, he knew Victor’s tells the same way Victor knew his. Dancing around each other to the tune of the past.</p>
<p>“What?” Eli said, squinting his eyes.</p>
<p>Victor cleared his throat.</p>
<p>“You didn’t have memory loss.”</p>
<p>“<em> What? </em>”</p>
<p>“You weren’t even eating them.”</p>
<p>He saw the exact moment he connected the dots. Eli gave him the same seething glare he always gave Victor when he forgot to dry their laundry. The same glare he used to give him before decking him with a couch pillow.</p>
<p>“You didn’t.”</p>
<p>“I’m afraid I did.”</p>
<p>“You made me think I was going mad!”</p>
<p>“Oh, come on,” Victor said. “It wasn’t <em> that </em>bad.”</p>
<p>“You <em> gaslit </em>me for years!”</p>
<p>“You were a dick, too.”</p>
<p>Eli sputtered loudly in protest, making Victor laugh.</p>
<p>“Don’t you <em> dare </em>laugh at this,” Eli said, but Victor could already see the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.</p>
<p>Soon, they were both trying to muffle their laughs, almost hysterical. Eli’s eyes glinted as he tried not to look at Victor in fear that he might start laughing all over again.</p>
<p>“God, you’re awful,” he said.</p>
<p>“Tell me something I don’t know,” Victor said, rolling his eyes.</p>
<p>“Did you even like them?”</p>
<p>“Uh?”</p>
<p>“The energy bars.”</p>
<p>“No,” Victor admitted. “I just enjoyed watching you rattled.”</p>
<p>“Why?” Eli asked again.</p>
<p>Victor knew he was talking about the pain, the laughs. Victor shrugged, stifling the words in his mind.</p>
<p>“Haven’t you heard? I’m allowed one heroic act per decade.”</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<ol>
<li><b> EON</b></li>
</ol>
<p>How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,</p>
<p>Like softest music to attending ears!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Eli saw when the serum worked on Victor. The episodes stopped, Victor started looking healthy. The was colour in his cheeks and he was slowly putting on weight.</p>
<p>They never talked of the lab. Eli just looked at Victor's smile and learned to count his blessings. He learned to think of their next debate when he was cut open, of that soft cadence in Victor's voice when Eli made a joke when they took out his liver.</p>
<p>Eli also saw the edge come back to Victor. Not the dangerous edge that came after turning, but the one he saw when Victor schemed his way out of a Chemistry practice.</p>
<p>He paid attention to the way Victor observed the guards come and go, to the smug smile whenever he came back from his own testing.</p>
<p>Victor Vale was planning something.</p>
<p>He came back from the latest test, drained and stumbling but with mirth in his eyes, and Eli stared.</p>
<p>"What," Victor said.</p>
<p>But Eli just raised his eyebrows with a huff, and when Victor blushed and cleared his throat, Eli knew Victor knew.</p>
<p>"Seems we'll be spending a lot of time together," Victor said.</p>
<p>Eli snorted at the half-assed code and thought <em> God I love him </em>, but didn't say it. Because Victor was planning a breakout and Eli really wanted to get out. Because Eli knew Victor would see the crack in the armor and prod.</p>
<p>"Wouldn't have any other way," Eli said instead.</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<p>
  <b>+1. The beginning</b>
</p>
<p>If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the wreckage and fire, they stood side by side: twin shadows against the light of their destruction, tempered and reborn. Victor smiled. Eli watched him do it, shadows dancing in the sharp angles of his face. </p>
<p>He almost felt small in the face of Victor's vindictive glee, like a mediocre actor thrown into the starring role. There was a cruel beauty in Victor, a sharpness in his laugh travelling the night, his white hair kissed by the warm light of the burning complex.</p>
<p>There was a crackling energy in the air around them when Victor threw his head back and smiled at the moon, teeth bared. Eli smelled smoke and warm earth, turmoil of vengeance and something meaner than hope coiling in the pit of his stomach.</p>
<p>He let out a huff, almost a laugh, and watched how Victor turned to him, how his smile became softer. The years hadn't been kind, but Victor Vale's beauty resided in a sense of danger, a barely contained and beautifully unmerciful beast.</p>
<p>One second they were feet apart and the next Victor’s forehead was pressed against his. He could feel Victor’s breath against his lip, his hand in the back of his neck, fingers carding through Eli’s hair. He could taste the sigh Victor let out, make out the words he whispered.</p>
<p>
  <em> We’re out. </em>
</p>
<p>But there was a shine in his eyes, there was a crackling energy in the air. Eli feared that it may rain, that their beautiful destruction would be extinguished. But it wasn’t the atmosphere. It was the electricity and static dancing around Victor’s frame like a playful caress.</p>
<p>
  <em> We’re out we’re out we’re out we’re out. </em>
</p>
<p>A litany escaping Victor’s lips while he searched Eli’s face, traced his jaw and nose and eyebrows with the tips of his fingers. As if he were in awe, looking at him. Foreheads still pressed together, Victor closed his eyes and allowed himself a smile. One Eli had never seen him wear. One that talked of relief and success and rest.</p>
<p>Eli risked raising his hand to touch Victor’s white hair. He did it gently, hesitantly, while Victor stayed impossibly still. Eli wondered if he had stopped breathing. Eli wondered if he would crumble under his fingers like an illusion. A ghost.</p>
<p>Eli cupped Victor’s face with feather light touch, hearing him inhale, eyelids fluttering. He saw Victor swallow. Eli bit back a smile. <em> There </em>he was. The old Victor under the new skin. Like a painting inside of a painting. Like a recurring dream. Eli chuckled and made their noses touch, trying to muffle the feeling growing inside his chest like. Trying to find words that wouldn’t mean everything he wanted to express.</p>
<p>His eyes met Victor’s, the fire of the building reflecting on them as Eli recognized the same feeling in them. The same realization.</p>
<p>In the end, they needn’t say it. Such an obvious thing. It would’ve weakened the raging storm inside their chest. How could something as simple as love encompass the dance of consuming, contradicting emotions that tied them together?</p>
<p>So Eli didn’t say it. Neither did Victor. Instead, Eli smiled, a wavering, shy thing of a smile and kissed Victor oh so tenderly.</p>
<p>“We’re out,” Eli whispered, just before Victor kissed back.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>